Religion and the Northern Rebellion History Essay Example

📌Category: British Empire, History, Religion
📌Words: 1178
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 18 April 2022

Religious issues were one of the many reasons of the northern revolt. But because England was so divided due to the fact that some people were catholic and some people were protestant, religious issues played a huge factor on why the northern Earl’s revolted against Elizabeth I. 

The religious settlement was put in place so there would be order in England about religion and it would discipline those that were against this law. The religious settlement was when the Queen Elizabeth I became the head of the English church aka supreme governor, (the act of supremacy) bibles had to be re-written in English and whilst priests were leading a mass prayer they were to wear special clothing (the act of uniformity) and anyone who didn’t attend church was to be prosecuted if they were reported to the privy council (the royal injunctions) however, many people found ways to not go to church by paying a fee of a shilling a week. This was equal to about 3 days wage. It may have been a little for the rich but a lot for the poor. But the religious settlement became lob sided in favour of protestants when the Queen found out many Catholics were plotting against her. But because the religious settlement was in favour of protestants, Catholics started to become frustrated and resorted to pettiness to deal with this frustration by causing havoc in the cities or harassing and assaulting protestants. But there was an even greater plot about to rise which was the revolt of the northern Earl’s. The northern Earl’s were a group of men from the north of England who were Earl’s. They were also strong catholic and when the Queen put the religious settlement in place it irritated them as that would mean they would lose money and power. Because of this they would dislike the Queen. That is why they came up with a plot. This plot involved an army of men and a man who was going to get married to Mary the queen of Scots who was recently chased out of Scotland. Let me explain. The Earl’s (with the help of their wives to give them a little push to do this) were to march into London with the help of 6,000 men and they were to kill Elizabeth I and the earl of Bothwell was to get married to the queen of Scots (who he has been in contact with for a decent amount of time where he has been explaining what the plot is going to consist of and why he has to marry her) and put her on the English throne. They were also going to get help from the Spanish troops instructed by King Phillip II of Spain and he was going to provide 14,000 men to fight for the northern Earl’s. But why did the king of Spain get involved with a revolt to help get rid of a queen of a powerful country? There were many reasons why. First of all, she was a protestant and he was a catholic. A catholic so good that the Pope (pope Pius V) had a personal connection towards him and continuously praised him. But Phillip wanted to make England catholic again as it was once catholic when Mary (Elizabeth’s older sister) was queen until she passed away. The king was also married to Mary when she was alive. Another reason why the king of Spain wanted to get rid of Elizabeth is because he disliked the fact that he offered to marry Elizabeth and she declined. He took this to heart and thought of it as an insult that a weak, feeble and a simple minded woman wouldn’t marry a strong, handsome and proud king of an all powerful empire. This would also benefit him as he was trying to expand his new world operation but a few people like Francis Drake were getting involved and messing up his plans. If he were to get rid of these men and even the queen, it would be great for him. He also wanted to put the queen of scots on the English monarch as she was a catholic and she would be able to cooperate with king Phillip properly in an orderly fashion. But unfortunately, the plans between the northern Earl’s and Spain failed miserably. The king was to provide an army of men for the northern earls and they were to show up at the coast of England. They did not show up at all. And so, because of this, the army of 6,000 men were defeated by Elizabeth’s men after she found out what troubles were brewing. Because of this revolt the Earl’s and Mary were executed and Elizabeth’s worries went away for quite some time. This us why religion was one of the main reasons why the northern Earls revolted. They did not like to see the Catholics lose and become pawns to protestants as they were too proud. And they didn’t like seeing such a huge divide in England just because Jack and Tom were a different religion to each other. 

However, this was not the only main reason why the northern Earl’s revolted. As I stated before, they were annoyed that they had lost so much money and power and because they had lost a lot of their power, that also meant they lost their rank of being a higher status than everyone else in the north of England. The thing about northern England, compared to London and the places around it there wasn’t much discrimination going on. Many people living in the north were catholic and the protestants living there kept there heads down and focused on working or whatever they were up to. But when the religious settlement was modified after some Catholics attempted to assassinate the Queen, some protestants became cocky because the Catholics that had a higher rank than them before, they were most likely on the same rank after the changes were made to the settlement. The Catholics did not enjoy this and started harassing and assaulting protestants and the protestants got all the blame on why the Catholics had lost a fortune of money and a lot of their rank. Whilst Catholics were losing money, the protestants kept their fortunes as many protestants were already pretty wealthy as they value hard work and like to save their money pretty well. This is why Catholics started assaulting protestants and they thought beating them up and stealing their money would be the best justification to this problem. But because this occurred, the queen kept modifying the law and kept putting it in favour of the protestants and she wouldn’t change the rules until the Catholics accepted it and learned from their mistakes. This is what caused the motivation towards the northern revolt because the Earl’s must have had enough of the queen’s mockery and chose to take this quest into their own hands.

Although I do think religion played a huge factor to the motivation of the northern revolt, I believe that politics played a higher role as if there weren’t any law changes, Catholics would have had freer reign and they wouldn’t have lost their power which was what motivated them into this revolt. But because they saw that the protestants were constantly winning and gaining, they became frustrated and couldn’t handle the problems that they started facing. And because they were so proud, they wanted to prove that they were always higher than protestants. So yes. I do believe politics played a higher role towards the revolt of the northern Earl’s.

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